News you can use
News you can use
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My Grandma came to live with us when I was four so that my Dad didn’t have to farm me and my sister out to relatives. Grandma was a good cook and taught me the learn-it-by-doing-it method. She told me that she had to bake bread every day raising her own seven children and she didn’t intend to bake another loaf of bread. Funny, she made bread rolls every Sunday and the pies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, cookies that rolled out of her oven were bountiful and delicious. There were thi...
Some days, it is a great comfort to me. Other days, a rather delightful joke, makes me chuckle at myself. I can still hear the laughter in my friend’s voice as he said to me, all those hundred years ago, “Tomorrow things will be different. They may not be better. They may not be worse. But they will be different.” I was a bit of a drama queen back then, a bit hooked on adrenaline. Even tragedy held excitement. I was prone to jump to conclusions, to make decisions and leap into...
Dear Most Wonderful, Most Precious, Beautiful and Intelligent Beyond Compare, My Loving Son and Daughter, I am writing to let you know that it is time for you to put your heads together and figure out a plan for elder care. With great sadness I report, it is the beginning of the end. I left a burner on beneath the egg pan this morning. Ate breakfast. Went outside and puttered in the garden. Came back inside to the odor of hot metal and burned butter. Fortunately, the pan did...
A friend introduced me to a new word: epicaricacy. An Olde English word. Means joy upon evil. Like schadenfreude. Like when someone else stubs his toe and stumbles, you gloat that it wasn’t you. Which has more than a sniff of self-righteousness. I know the word intimately. I try to keep it swatted away and like a mosquito, it returns. What strange creatures we are who live much inside our own heads. And what a strange head, speaking for myself. I cannot trust everything I t...
“I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl, “Yeah, sweet Calendar Girl, “I love, I love, I love my Calendar Girl, “Each and every day of the Year.” Thank you, Neil Sedaka, wherever you are. I had to share this ancient song from the last century with you. Now these cheesy lyrics will possess your mind like they possess mine. Why? Well, that is the story. It’s a new year upon us. Yep. 2023. Who’d a thought we’d make it! I like old-fashioned paper calendars. I like to keep mine, a...
And so it goes. We folks with more miles on the chassis put away the old calendar and open the new calendar, 12 blank pages of promise, blank pages of mystery, of wonder whether we will make it through next December. That sounds grim but said above, we older folks. I’m not sure how the younger people measure time. Maybe by that big thing similar to a watch on their wrist — that device that does everything for them. Someone told me it even tells them to “quit slouc...
Last year, I realized I had come to dread Christmas obligations. I like to give to others. But when it becomes an obligation, trying to find that just right small gift for the families on the Rancho, seemed overwhelming. Years ago, my own children and I agreed to not give adult gifts, but to focus on their children. Last year I told my neighbors here at the Rancho, that instead of joining the usual gift exchange, I would give a gift to a family in the community who had...
Christmas is a-coming soon and although there are only five couples and me in residence at the Rancho at present, plans are afoot and afloat for communal gatherings. Me, I’m trying to respectfully decline invitations while ignoring judgmental comments without cringing. I cringe. We all would prefer our friends to understand us, right, to support us unconditionally, right? Back-story first. When the COVID pandemic hit, most of us here masked, bought disinfectants and hand sanit...
I own a revered and older washing machine. A washing machine is possibly the most wonderful tool ever created by man for the use of women. I never did like lugging laundry down to the river to pound it on rocks and dry it slung over prickly berry bushes. I highly recommend men learn to use a washing machine also. My washing machine is ancient. It was old when I bought it. I live in Mexico. When something breaks down, somebody will be able to fix it. That’s what we do here. T...
The other day I said, “I was worried that Jane (nearly 95 and frail) might not hold up during your special dinner at the restaurant.” Immediately I was scolded, “No, no, no. Don’t say that. That is a negative thought. We don’t need negative thoughts. That is bad.” Whoa on me. I was taken aback. And I felt uncomfortable. I hadn’t meant that I was immersed in worry, sending sure death pulsing into the Universe. I’d had a fleeting thought, perhaps improperly expressed, that my fr...
I remember the Thanksgiving when Ben first brought his girlfriend, Shea, to dinner. We had the traditional meal, turkey nicely browned, all the side dishes. I asked everyone to share some one thing they felt especially thankful for that day. Years later my daughter-in-law, Shea, told me how my request had terrified her. None of her family talked about gratitude. Poor Shea. On top of being scared to share something personal, she had been scared to meet me. My children! Both of...
Michelle, knowing me to be, shall we say, frugal, loaned me a copy of a reprinted book entitled “The American Frugal Housewife.” The book, written by Lydia Child, was first published in 1833. Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy. In caps. Mrs. Child wrote the lyrics, but was not well known, but wrote a song for children, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.” Anyone my generation knows that song. I’m sure you youngsters can find it o...
Sunday, here in Mexico, we pushed time back an hour. Whew. Hard work, pushing. Guess what? It’s the Last Time. I don’t mean the End of Times. Or the end of time, as relative a concept as time happens to be. The Mexican governing body voted to hang out in Standard Time, forever and ever, amen. I’m happy with that decision. I have no reason to complain. I don’t live by the clock. I don’t need to get up at zero-dark-thirty to go to work. Nevertheless, I’m happy to stay on one...
This morning after I got dressed, I did something outside of my routine. I looked in the mirror. Hmmm, said I, to myself. Not bad. The layers match this morning. The socks don’t match the tops. Oh, well. They match each other. Mates. A pair. But if they didn’t, oh, well. No matter. Socks matter on these old feet. Warm matters, especially in the cool morning. I walked into the kitchen to fill the kettle with water for coffee. That bag of flour is still sitting on the island. Wh...
We get used to using particular products in our daily living so when those items are not available on store shelves, what is a person to do? Ha! I have the answer. We make do! Generally I’m not too fussy and don’t get into a flap about bare shelves. And I don’t play the blame game. That’s futile. Pandemic? Climate disasters? Politics? Maybe they all play a part. But that doesn’t change my challenge, to live as simply and comfortably as possible with what’s on hand, right? But...
Now and then I have these great ideas. Not that I do anything with them. Not that I even want to do anything with them. My time, well, that was a younger chapter in my life. Come and gone. I’ll just throw this out there to see if you wish to do something with it. For free. Gratis. No charge. You are welcome. My million-dollar idea of the day. Once upon a yesterday I had a friend who proclaimed we each had a million-dollar idea a day but never recognized it or dismissed the d...
The first week in October is always a difficult week for me. It marks the anniversary of the death of my baby. He’d been alive that morning. He died that night when he was born. Still a girl myself, I’d been married only a year and a half. My family did the thing they did best. They hid away all the pain and hurt. I thought that is what everyone did. Stuffed the grief into a hole and covered it with concrete blocks. Or heavy weight of a sort. Of course, over the years, the...
Do you ever spend the night working? Without getting out of bed? Not creative thinking, not mentally composing poetry or writing love (or hate) letters you will never send. I mean real physical labor type working. I just spent the night cooking, perfecting my version of pay de chili marron, translated as bell pepper pie. Without getting out of bed. This is not a usual Mexican dish. You could peek into every kitchen in Etzatlan and you won’t find a slice of this exotic pie. A...
That was some rattle-my-bones earthquake! When the shocks reached me, I was sitting at my computer, working on my Spanish. Immediately my chair became a rocking chair. Instantly I knew it was a quake. I could see the light fixtures swaying over my stove and sink. The twenty-litre bottle of drinking water threatened to jump from the ceramic holding jar. My mind erased everything I had learned about quake safety. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to be outside in the open ar...
I had a restless night, had made a hasty decision hard to unmake, nothing important, but irritating, and my mind wanted to run it on a Mobius Loop. I said, Enough of this. I’ll think about something else. On my bedroom wall I’d hung a beautiful depiction of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It’s not art, more like a framed poster. In the full moonlight, it was easy to focus on her calming face. I began wondering what the not-historic parts of Mary’s life might have been like and this is...
Such a simple thing, making the bed when one gets up in the morning. If one does. Make the bed, that is. If that is one’s habit. Who’d have thought, who could have imagined, there would be at least five different things one did wrong every morning of one’s life while making the bed. Cor blimey. (I read that in a book. It means something similar to “what the hay” or “dang me, orter take a rope and hang me” and other phrases of utter astonishment.) How do I know that I and po...
What a week. When my son flew back to Washington, along with a bundle of two-foot long cinnamon sticks for gifts to friends, he took my energy. I wasn’t worried. I knew that the following day my supply would be replenished. Sure enough, the next day I flew into a cleaning frenzy. Order was soon restored but I have a question. Where does order hide out that it needs to be restored? At the Orderaria, of course, Spanglish for the Order Store. You know, like “carneceria” (meat...
Two weeks. What a gift. I have had two weeks with my son at my home. My guestroom with bath was finished before Ben’s plane landed. He said, “Mom, I don’t want to do a lot of visiting neighbors (of whom there are so few) or any tourist stuff. I just want to be with you and to have solitude to consider my life, to figure out what I want to do next. I want a retreat, away from everyday activities and responsibilities.” And so it went. We filled each day with stories, memorie...
If you ever for one minute think you are different from other Americans in this foreign country, who seem to live by the motto of “I want it; I want it all; I want it now,” just endeavor to undertake a major construction project. You will discover your Gringo sense of entitlement. Guaranteed. My project isn’t major and it is only quasi construction. In a little-used space adjacent to my bodega guest bedroom, I’m installing a bathroom. Rendering my guest bedroom to en-suit...
Let’s start with the back story. Way Back. Last year, because of the pandemic, I took my travel money and gutted my bodega which was a mishmash of shelves cobbled together from scrap wood. Shoved in rather randomly were what I call man tools and that which I didn’t want stored in the house. It was a mess, but needs must. Once my bodega transformed into my guest bedroom, I kept imagining how nice it would be to have a bathroom alongside my bedroom. In back and along the out...
